


up off the floor

by kaspbrak_kid



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Eternal Happiness, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, M/M, Making Out, Nightmares, Recovery, Romance, Sharing a Bed, Spoilers, Tenderness, The Kissing Bridge (IT), i really HAD to write this like i had no choice, it's what they deserve, reddie came for my life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-21 00:49:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20684750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaspbrak_kid/pseuds/kaspbrak_kid
Summary: "In a world where we can kill a fucking clown from space, Eddie Kaspbrak doesn’t get to die from a stab wound."





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (sorry the chapters are so short, i kept getting too excited to post. they get a bit longer.)

The constant beep of the heart monitor would be annoying if it wasn’t music to Richie’s ears. 

It’s been hours, now, since they got out of Neibolt House. It’s dark, and Richie feels like he’s been awake for days. His eyes ache, and his head pounds. Everything feels very far away and shockingly close and real at the same time—It, and the sewers, and the Deadlights. It all feels like it happened five years ago, and simultaneously like he’s about to get sucked back into it at any second. Like it hasn’t actually ended. And Richie wants so desperately for it to be over. 

There hasn’t been any closure. After they escaped from the crumbling house, they were all exhausted, some of them bleeding, all of them filthy and scared. Richie had wanted, so fucking badly, to just. Go home. Or maybe jump into the Quarry, wash off, wash everything off. Hug his friends, and celebrate the fact that they’re fucking _alive_, and that It is dead. 

But instead he’s here. In the hospital. Holding onto Eddie Kaspbrak’s hand like it’s the only thing keeping him alive. 

They’d almost left him. _God_, they had almost left Eddie there under Neibolt. He’d been so still, just lying there on the floor, blood bubbling from his mouth, bleeding all over Richie’s shirt. They’d all thought he was gone. _Richie_ thought he was gone. Deep down. But he didn’t want to believe it. He wouldn’t believe it. He wouldn’t _leave him there._

He’d seen Eddie there, bleeding out, and he’d thought, _fuck this_. He’d thought, _this doesn’t get to happen. In a world where we can kill a fucking clown from space, Eddie Kaspbrak doesn’t get to die from a stab wound._ He’d thought, _if Eddie Kaspbrak can wish a weapon into saving my life, I can wish Eddie Kaspbrak into surviving a fucking flesh wound._

They’d dragged him out. They hadn’t thought they could do it, but they did it, because they had to. And then they had called a fucking ambulance, because Eddie was bleeding all over them, through Richie’s jacket and all over everyone’s hands, but he was _breathing_, Richie pressed his jacket down on Eddie’s stomach and his ear up against Eddie’s mouth and he felt him breathing. Slow, weak breaths. It didn’t matter. He was alive. 

He’s still alive. The heart monitor proves it. For hours, Richie had sat outside in the waiting room, heart in his throat, and looked at the blood crusted under his fingernails as he waited for someone to come out and tell him if Eddie was alive or not. The other Losers had come and gone, getting food, getting clean clothes, taking showers. But Richie stayed. He couldn’t leave. He had to know. 

A nurse had come out. He said Eddie was stable. He said things were looking good. The knife—they all said it was a knife, they couldn’t say it was a fucking _clown claw_—went through his intestines, but didn’t even perforate any of them. Slippery buggers, the nurse said with a small smile. Richie didn’t smile back. 

He’s in Eddie’s room now. Waiting again. There are tubes everywhere, wires and things sticking out of him, IVs and monitors and shit. Richie doesn’t fucking know. He was intubated, before, on a respirator while he was under anesthesia for the surgery. Now he just has one of those nose cannulas. Richie doesn’t know how long it’s been. He thinks maybe it’s getting light outside again.

He’s still covered in blood. Eddie’s blood. Stan brought him a clean shirt, so he changed into that, and scrubbed his hands roughly in the bathroom, but there’s still blood on his pants, and under his fingernails, and in the lines of his knuckles. He can still feel it, slippery under his hands, when he rubs them together. Hot and slick and red. He can still see it, draining out of Eddie’s body, when he closes his eyes. So he keeps them open, as much as he can. He holds Eddie’s hand. He waits for him to wake up. 

He told the doctors that he’s Eddie’s boyfriend, he thinks. It’s all kind of a blur. But it had looked, for a while, like they weren’t going to let Richie in, they weren’t going to let Richie stay. He’d said whatever he needed to to make sure they would let him stay. He’d felt a little guilty about it, when a doctor asked if there was anyone they should call, to let them know Eddie was here, and now Richie couldn’t exactly just say, “_Oh yeah, maybe his wife?_” So he hadn’t said anything. But he doesn’t regret it. 

Richie desperately needs to sleep. He can’t. He won’t. Everyone else has gone back to their rooms at the Townhouse, with strict instructions to call if something happened. Richie will stay. The doctors tell him it’ll be a few hours until Eddie wakes up, and still, Richie stays, and he doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t want Eddie to wake up while he’s asleep. He doesn’t want Eddie to wake up and not have someone there to greet him. 

He listens to the steady beep of the heart monitor. It’s grating on his nerves. He loves it so much. 

Richie doesn’t sleep, but he still jerks into full wakefulness when Eddie makes a sound and twitches. Richie swallows hard, holds tighter to Eddie’s hand on his bed. Eddie’s wan face spasms. His lips move soundlessly. His eyelids flutter open. 

“Hey,” Richie whispers, quieter than he means to, watching Eddie’s face intently. “Hey, hey. Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty.” 

Eddie makes a sound like a croak. Richie wonders if he should call the nurse or something. He doesn’t. 

“What,” Eddie says, voice hoarse. Probably from spitting up blood and then having a fucking tube shoved down his throat.

Richie smiles, even though he feels like fucking crying. God. _God_. It’s so nice to hear his voice again. “Hey. Guess who’s not dead.”

Eddie blinks a few times, long, slow blinks that Richie fears will turn back into unconsciousness. But he wrenches them open again, and focuses them on Richie’s face. “Rich?” he croaks. 

Richie’s grin wobbles. “That’s right. Me. Not dead. Also you, not dead. It? Definitely dead. This time for sure.”

Eddie makes a vague sound and blinks for too long again. He’s pretty drugged up, Richie knows. Probably won’t remember this in the future. In the future when he will definitely still be alive. “Rich,” he says again, and his thumb twitches, drags across the backs of Richie’s fingers where they’re wrapped around Eddie’s hand. Richie shivers. 

“Hmm?” he says, unable to articulate any better than that. 

Eddie’s throat works for a moment, and his bleary eyes focus on Richie again. His nose wrinkles. “Take— Take a shower. Gross.”

Richie barks out a laugh, and hopes Eddie can’t focus well enough to see the tears that spring to his eyes. “You just got out of major surgery, Eds, and you’re worried about how dirty my hair is?”

Eddie makes a sound between a hum and a groan. “S’gross,” he says. “Bacteria. In my...room.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Richie says, and doesn’t move. 

They’re quiet for a minute. Eddie blinks a lot, sometimes at Richie, sometimes up at the ceiling. He’s obviously not all there, but he’s also obviously trying. Squinting and frowning and taking deeper breaths as if he’s getting ready to say something, and then exhaling as if trailing off. 

Richie says, “Hey. You want me to...call anyone? The nurse, or like...home?”

He doesn’t want to say _your wife._ Just in case someone’s listening. 

Either way, Eddie makes a quiet sound and shakes his head. Richie goes a little limp with relief. 

He leans in closer. “Hey,” he says again, quieter this time. “If anyone asks, I’m Myra Kaspbrak, your buxom wife.”

Eddie squints at him. There’s a familiar line between his eyebrows, and Richie thinks he might be in love with it. “Wha?”

Richie falters, clears his throat. “I’m kidding. But I did tell them I’m your...something. You can correct them if you want.”

“Mmm.” Eddie closes one eye and scrunches up his face to the side. He sniffs. His blinks get longer again. “Rich,” he says again. 

“Yeah?” Richie says, heart in his throat. 

“Please...please shower.”

Richie laughs again, unsteady, and holds Eddie’s hand as he drifts back off to sleep, chest rising and falling. He listens to the sound of the heart monitor. Eddie breathes noisily, dead to the world, but not dead. Not fucking dead. 

Richie swallows hard, and holds tight to his hand. And then he turns it over, and leans in, and presses his mouth to Eddie’s warm palm, just to soothe the ache in his chest, and to feel the life in him, right up against his lips. His breath comes out shaky against Eddie’s skin. 

He puts Eddie’s hand down, and stands up. He needs to shower.


	2. Chapter 2

They spend a week in the hospital, altogether. 

Things start looking better, after the surgery. Eddie starts waking up more often, and for longer. He’s alternatingly really drugged up or in a lot of pain, but he’s awake, and he’s talking to Richie, and whoever else happens to be in the room. He gets wheeled out for tests sometimes, and Richie always hates that, hates losing sight of him for even a second, always feels like maybe he won’t come back. That Richie will lose him, like he saw himself losing him in the deadlights. 

But he always comes back, usually bitching about improper protocol and fucking sepsis. Richie loves it, every fucking time. Music to his ears, just like the obnoxious fucking heart monitor. 

He tells himself he’s here for Eddie’s sake, because he’d be bored out of his mind without someone to complain to, and because Richie doesn’t want him to wake up alone. But he knows it’s selfishly motivated, especially when there are other Losers in the room and Richie still can’t get himself to leave. He goes only when he’s forced to, sleeps only when his body shuts down from sheer exhaustion. Otherwise he’s right there, beside Eddie’s bed, watching him sleep or listening to him bitch. Arguing with him about nothing, for as long as Eddie can keep his eyes open. Richie owes him that much, but he also can’t get himself to do anything else. 

As the days pass by and Eddie continues to improve, the doctors start to talk about releasing him into outpatient care, and start preparing his primary carer to do their job. 

As Eddie’s pretend-boyfriend-or-something, this duty falls to Richie. The doctors tell him how to clean and pack a wound, what to look for in case of infection, how to take off and rewrap Eddie’s bandages. How often to let him take medication, what to do to manage pain. It’s a lot of information, and Eddie’s not always awake to hear it, and Richie worries because he can’t keep track of it all and he’s not actually Eddie’s boyfriend and the person who will really be caring for Eddie isn’t learning this stuff. 

But Eddie’s not correcting the doctors, and realistically Eddie already knows all this stuff anyway. So Richie just nods dutifully, and helps the nurse change Eddie’s bandage while he’s asleep, and pretends that he’ll be the person helping Eddie in and out of the bathroom for the next six months. With how badly Richie wants it, it’s not that hard. 

The estimated release day is approaching, though, and Richie is starting to panic a little. The rest of the gang has started to trickle out of Derry, back to their lives and their jobs, or off to new things. They’ve been checking in regularly, maybe even obsessively, which Richie appreciates because he, too, is co-dependent and misses them all already. But he’s not ready to go yet. He’s not ready to leave Derry, and he’s terrified of forgetting again, and he’s terrified of losing...this. Of losing Eddie again. He’s not ready for this to be over. 

But Richie is also a grown-ass fucking adult who can deal with his issues, so as the day draws nearer, Richie asks, for maybe the third or fourth time, “Hey, Eds, should I like...call your wife, maybe?”

Eddie gives him a long, assessing stare, and instead of dodging the question like he usually does, Eddie says, with surprising vehemence, “_Fuck_ my wife.”

Richie blinks at him. “Huh?”

“Literally, Richie, _literally_...fuck my fucking wife.”

Richie stares, and swallows thickly. Eddie is flat on his back and still more grey than Richie wants him to be but he is still able to muster a lot of fire in his eyes and while Richie is confused and taken aback, he is also really, _really_ fucking captivated by it. It’s a fire that was once familiar, a fire Richie used to try to coax out of him with poorly-timed jokes and obnoxious Voices, and now loves for all the same reasons. “Eddie, man,” he says a little numbly, “I love you, but this might be where I draw the line.”

Now it’s Eddie’s turn to blink, and frown. The line between his brows is back. “Huh?”

“Fucking your wife,” Richie says. He swallows again, and looks at the dimple in Eddie’s cheek when he frowns in this one specific way. “Like, honestly, I mean. Eddie. I’m not even really into women.”

Eddie stares at him for a long time. The dimple disappears as his jaw goes slack, and Richie misses it. His heart pounds in his throat. Painfully. Eddie blinks, and says, “Are you coming out to me right now?”

Richie twitches his nose, and looks away at the corner of the room, and sniffs. Clears his throat. Shrugs. “Maybe?”

Eddie laughs. Richie’s eyes fly back to him, because Eddie is laughing, and Richie doesn’t want to miss a fucking _second_ of it. His mouth is stretched wide to one side, avoiding his injured cheek, and he’s shaking his head, and his face is so wan and his eyes are so tired but he’s laughing and it clenches around Richie’s heart, _hard_. God, the things he’d do to make Eddie laugh. 

“Fucking ow,” Eddie says, wincing and trailing off, hand hovering over his abdomen. “Don’t make me laugh, fuckface. Hand me my phone.” 

Richie has no idea what’s happening, but he does so willingly, handing Eddie the phone Richie has been dutifully keeping charged for nearly a week now, while Eddie focuses on wiping it down with a dozen antibacterial wipes a day. Eddie sniffs, flicks open the lockscreen. 

He opens his contacts. Clicks on one at the top. Brings it to his ear. “Hey Myra?” he says. “Get fucked.”

Richie stares at him for a moment, gobsmacked, and then realizes with a jolt that he can still hear the phone ringing in their quiet room. The call hasn’t even gone through yet. 

He snorts, and then starts laughing, shaking his head. Eddie grins, and says nothing, phone still held to his ear as Richie laughs and laughs, and tries not to let it show when they turn into sobs a little bit, as all of his laughter does recently. It’s the release of tension, he thinks, the way laughter makes everything fall away and lets other things come out, too. His eyes water. His nose runs. Richie wipes them away, and peters off into unsteady chuckles, and watches Eddie continue to make his call, silent and smiling. 

“Hey, Myra,” he says again, but this time to an actual person. “Hey. Sorry I haven’t called. I...I won’t be coming home for a while.”

Richie swallows, and holds his breath, heart skipping a beat. 

Myra yells over the phone. Richie can’t make out what she’s saying, but she sounds pissed. He supposes he can understand that, but he also relishes the frown on Eddie’s face as he listens to it, like he’s about to be forced to use a public washroom. 

“Myra,” he says again, interrupting her. “I might not be coming home for a very, very long time. I— I might not be coming home ever. Sorry.” And then, after a beat, “But actually not that sorry.”

“_Eddie_,” Myra screams, and this time Richie _can_ hear her, loud and clear. “_If you don’t come back this instant we’re over._” 

“That’s what you said when I left,” Eddie says dryly, which is news to Richie. 

“_I mean it this time_,” Myra tells him harshly. 

A slow smile steals across Eddie’s face. “Myra,” he says. “Nothing would make me happier.”

He hangs up. Richie is grinning again, doesn’t know when it started but can’t get himself to wipe it off his face, and Eddie looks back at him and matches it, lopsided and perfect. Richie’s heart squeezes painfully. 

“Hey, Rich,” Eddie says, while Richie’s eyes are still stuck on his fucking dimple. “If you laugh at me, I swear I will fucking kill you. But I’m pretty sure I’ve never been that into women, either.”

And they both crack up again, and it’s so stupid, because it isn’t funny. Eddie just left his wife over the phone and came out and he’s lying on a bed in a hospital with a hole in his stomach and everything is _shit_, but they’re both laughing, and it feels good. It feels so fucking good. 

Or at least it does for Richie, but after a couple seconds Eddie is hissing, and curling in on himself with a groan, and Richie’s hands are shooting out to hover automatically over his abdomen, close but not touching. 

“Damn, Eds, cool it,” he says, forcing levity into his voice as his fingers brush against the soft, worn fabric of Eddie’s shirt. “Don’t worry, baby, I’ll take care of you.”

Immediately, Eddie is looking away from Richie, so far to the other side that it can’t be coincidental. The frown-dimple is back, and his throat bobs, the line of it stark against his pillow. 

“Hey,” Richie says, anxiety closing around his chest and throat. “Hey, what’s up?”

Eddie shakes his head, and grips his phone tightly. 

It takes Richie a second to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth, and another to open it. He panics, for a second, about saying the wrong thing. He always used to worry about saying the wrong thing by accident—it was much better to say the wrong thing on purpose. “Eds,” he manages. “I’m serious. If you—if you need someone, I’m your guy, yeah?” 

Eddie’s face screws up, and he winces, maybe from pulling on the stitches in his cheek. “I can’t make you stay.”

“You’re not.” It’s out of Richie’s mouth before he’s even had a chance to let the words register. “Eds, seriously. You think I’d be here if I didn’t want to be?” His heart judders uncomfortably. “I’m not _that_ grateful for you saving my life. My debt’s been paid back in full.” 

Eddie doesn’t smile, and he also doesn’t look at Richie. “I, you don’t have to stay, I can. Myra wasn’t serious, I can go back—” 

“Like hell you will,” Richie says, cutting him off. He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s saying, but he’s not letting Eddie pack up and go home to the wife he literally _just_ got away from. “Go to sleep, fuckface. I’ll get this figured out, okay? I’m not going fucking anywhere.”

There’s a moment of still, terrifying silence, and then Eddie nods, just a little. He looks at Richie, and then away. It looks like he’s biting his tongue. On the bed between them, his hand twitches. 

Richie grabs it, mostly out of instinct. He’s going to have to train himself out of that, but for now, he just squeezes, too hard and too quick. And then he stands up, and pushes Eddie’s head to the side, and says, “Sleep. I’m gonna make some calls.”

He leaves before he can do anything stupid, say something he’ll regret. But he catches the edge of a smile before he goes. So at least that’s alright.


	3. Chapter 3

Two days later, Richie watches as a nurse helps Eddie into a wheelchair and Eddie’s doctor runs over a list of instructions for the last time. 

“So you’ll change his bandages every day,” the doctor says, flipping through a clipboard. “And you won’t let it get wet. And you’ll make sure he takes his medication.”

“Oh, trust me, he’ll remember to take his medication,” Richie says distractedly. Eddie is groaning through the transfer to the wheelchair. 

The doctor gives him a bland look. “Mr. Kaspbrak is not exactly at his best right now, Mr. Tozier.”

Richie snorts. “The day Eddie Kaspbrak forgets to take medication is the day the world implodes.”

“Shut up, Richie,” Eddie grits out. 

“I’m just saying.” Richie shrugs. 

The doctor sighs. “Make sure he’s not doing any lifting or stretching for a while. Bring him in if anything seems off. And I’m sure I don’t have to tell you this but,” he levels them each with a look over his clipboard, “no sex for at _least_ six weeks. Trust me.”

Richie’s face flames, and he clears his throat, glancing at Eddie. Eddie looks very pointedly anywhere but at him. “Not even a little?” Richie says, slapping on his best shit-eating grin. 

“Not even a little,” the doctor confirms dryly. 

“Not even a handjob?” Richie says, because somehow Richie always thinks it’s a good idea to react to discomfort by making everyone else feel worse. 

“Shut the fuck up, Rich,” Eddie mutters, face flushed. 

Richie snickers, but the doctor just gives them an unimpressed look and says, “Not even a handjob. Unless you feel like losing your guts.”

“No thanks. No sex, got it,” Eddie says, wincing. 

“How will I survive?” Richie says with a grin, hoping desperately that his own flush isn’t showing. 

“Would you like me to give you tips?” the doctor asks, one eyebrow cocked. 

“No, no, that’s fine,” Richie says quickly. “I’ll manage. Thanks, doc. We’ll be going now.”

Eddie sniggers all the way to the car. 

It’s a thirteen-minute drive from the hospital to their new crib—a tiny, pre-furnished rental on the outskirts of Derry that looks and smells like a ninety-year-old grandmother lived _and_ died there. Richie knows they could have left Derry, could have been transferred out to LA to stay in Richie’s condo or gone literally anywhere else, rather than stay here, the backdrop to all of both of their worst memories. But Richie isn’t ready to leave Derry yet. Every corner reminds him of nightmares, but it’s the setting of all of his best memories, too. Now that he’s remembering them. The place where he met his best friends. The place where he became himself. The place where Eddie Kaspbrak _didn’t die_. 

Eddie needs help walking into the house from their rental car, face white and legs shaky. Richie holds tight to his waist and gets him through the door, and onto the couch in the living room. It’s got a godawful floral pattern and smells like potpourri. Eddie groans as he’s lowered onto it, and says, “I’m never moving from here, ever. This is where I live now.”

“You’re not gonna want to sleep there, Eds. You’re not thirteen anymore, your spine’ll never recover.”

“My spine’ll never recover because it was almost skewered by a space clown,” Eddie grates. 

“There’s a bed, man. Please use it.”

Eddie squints up at him, hand hovering over his middle like he’s protecting it. “There’s _a_ bed?”

Richie shifts uncomfortably. “Um, yeah. A bed.”

“_One_ bed?”

Richie can only shrug. “I was low on options on such short notice, okay? There were a lot of things I had to take into account. No stairs, close to the hospital, furniture. Number of beds was not that important.”

Eddie huffs, and it turns into a groan. “So what’s your plan? Camping out on the floor next to me?”

It’s a little tempting. They used to do it all the time, as kids. Eddie would sleep in his bed, and Richie would sleep on a pile of blankets next to it. He’d slip into Eddie’s bed with him, sometimes. Press his cold toes against Eddie’s shins. Just to annoy him. (He said it was just to annoy him.)

“I’ll take the couch,” he says with a shrug. “I think it turns into a pull-out.”

Eddie just hums, eyes fluttering shut. “Go get our luggage,” he says. “And then go out and buy me new sheets.”

“Don’t think you can boss me around just because you’re injured, dipshit,” Richie says, balling up a receipt from his pocket and throwing it at him. It bounces off Eddie’s shoulder. “Take a nap or something.”

And then he goes to get their luggage.

It’s a long day from there. Eddie doesn’t get up much, opting to lie on the couch for most of the day, apart from periodically asking Richie to help him to the bathroom and back, which is a whole process that Eddie hates and Richie guiltily enjoys for how much he gets to touch him. Other than the bits where Eddie is in excruciating pain, of course. 

Otherwise, Eddie mostly sleeps and groans and drinks disgusting smoothies that Richie blends up for him and sometimes rubs at his eyes surreptitiously, breath hitching. Richie makes sure he’s as comfortable as he can be, makes sure he doesn’t need anything, and otherwise putters around the house, unpacking some of their things and finding places for them, changing Eddie’s goddamn sheets, going out to buy them food. He feels like a housewife, in a way that he really doesn’t mind. He keeps busy. He focuses on Eddie. 

“I think this could be my full-time job,” Richie says cheerfully, handing Eddie some Vicodin and a glass of water. 

“This _is_ your full-time job,” Eddie says with a wince, knocking the medication back. “You’re my official goddamn guardian.”

“Official goddamn guardian of your heart,” Richie singsongs, and then bites his tongue and leaves the room, because that was a stupid fucking thing to say. 

When he comes back, carrying a pack of wet wipes like that’s why he left, Eddie is frowning, rubbing his thumb over the rim of his cup. Richi thinks maybe he’ll regret it, but he opens his mouth and what comes out is, “Hey, you okay? Gonna rupture your spleen or anything?” 

Eddie sniffs, doesn’t lift his eyes, and says, “This is your full-time job.”

Richie blinks and shrugs. “Yeah, I guess. For a little while.”

“That’s shitty of me.”

Richie snorts, and Eddie’s eyes dart to him. “Eds. Someone’s gotta do it.”

“It shouldn’t be you,” Eddie says, and Richie’s stomach plummets through the floor until Eddie shakes his head and says, “It shouldn’t _have_ to be you.”

“Hey. Dipshit.” Richie waits for Eddie to look at him. “I want it to be me.”

Eddie’s cheek twitches in the flicker of a smile, and he drops his gaze. Richie rolls his eyes. 

“Stop making me say corny shit. You feeling okay? All organs intact?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool. I’m gonna go make some food. Let me know when you want to complain about something.”

“I don’t just complain for fun, Rich.”

Richie grins at him. “Oh, Eddie. It’s cute that you believe that.”

Eddie shoots him the finger. Richie blows him a kiss and gets to work in the kitchen. 

They watch a movie in the evening, on Richie’s laptop because the boxy TV in the living room is still hooked up to a VCR and nothing else. They sit side-by-side on the couch, Eddie rumpled and wan, Richie sprawling and checking on him periodically out of the corner of his eye. His laptop sits on the weathered wooden coffee table and plays a B-rate action flick, and Eddie, while groggy, still manages to bitch about unrealistic injuries and chances of infection. After an hour, he trails off into silence, and when Richie looks over at him he sees that Eddie is dead asleep, mouth hanging open, chest rising and falling steadily. 

Richie smiles, brushing his fingertips gently over the knee of Eddie's sweatpants, and feels a familiar squeeze in his chest. This whole trip to Derry has been a shitfest, one ridiculously hard thing after another. The only easy thing about it has been falling back into the habit of being in love with Eddie Kaspbrak.

*

The thing about life-threatening injuries is that they make you forget how much you want someone, for a while. Not—not emotionally, obviously, Richie is _well_ aware of that. But physically. It's hard to think about someone's body and how much you want to do filthy things to it when that body is being sewn back together, or is actively leaking fluids that should not be seen on the outside of a body, or when the sense memory of that body bleeding all over you is still fresh in your mind.

Richie doesn't think about it, for a little while. Is too busy hoping that the body in question stays whole. 

He is not proud of the fact that that yawning feeling of deep, visceral want returns to him in the middle of changing Eddie's bandage. 

"You have to repack them," Eddie tells him, shirtless and propped up on strong arms as Richie peels the gauze off his wounds. It’s early morning, and they’re both tired and sore—Eddie from almost dying a week ago, and Richie from sleeping on the lumpy pull-out couch and having a lot of nightmares. 

"Yeah, no shit," Richie says cheerfully. "I know how to do this."

"Excuse me if I don't trust someone with Dorito dust in his hair to know proper First Aid," Eddie says, hissing as the gauze catches on dried blood. 

"I lived in a hospital for a week. I'm practically a doctor now." Richie finishes peeling off the old bandages and tosses them into the trash. 

"If that's how that worked I'd be a fucking attending physician by now," Eddie mutters. 

"You probably could be. Sit up a little, I gotta check if you're oozing." 

Eddie grits his teeth and lifts his torso a few inches. Richie runs his fingers over the broad expanse of his back, and then his front, on either side of his wounds, feeling gently for inflammation. 

Eddie shivers, and his abs flex, causing him to groan in pain. Richie shivers in automatic response, his fingertips pressed up against smooth skin and firm muscle. 

"Damn, Eddie, you didn't tell me you were ripped."

Eddie snorts, then says, "Fuck you, I told you not to make me laugh." 

"I wasn't trying to! I was just remarking on your toned abs." Richie presses his palm to his stomach, swallows thickly. "Very nice."

They’re both very still and silent for a moment, faces close together and breathing the same air, and a familiar want rips through Richie. A kind of want that sends him careening straight back into thoughts he buried over two decades ago, and then forgot about completely. God, Richie never wanted anyone like he wanted Eddie fucking Kaspbrak. 

And then Eddie breaks the silence to say, “Are you not wearing your fucking gloves?”

Richie winces. “Uh.”

“Richie, put on your _goddamn_ fucking gloves, I swear to god. I will fucking kill you.”

Richie would argue, but he really is supposed to wear surgical gloves when he’s changing Eddie’s bandages, and he doesn’t _actually_ want Eddie’s massive wounds to get infected. So he washes and dries his hands a second time, and puts on his gloves, and then gets back to work, checking over the wounds and cleaning them and doing all the other shit he never thought he’d be able to stomach but does, now, because he has to. Richie has _seen some shit_. He can handle what is comparatively only a bit of gore. 

There is a lot of gentle prodding and wincing and muttered cursing and apologies involved. And hand-washing. Richie follows his instructions with more precision and intent than he has ever done anything in his life. Eddie bitches anyway. Richie likes it. 

By the time he’s finished, Eddie is completely winded and desperate for more medication, and Richie is a little sweaty himself. Eddie lies back on the couch, propped up on pillows, and pants wearily into the still air of their stuffy little living room, and Richie goes to get him a thousand wet wipes and something to eat. 

“I want to take a _fucking_ shower,” Eddie huffs, wiping down his arms and bare chest weakly. 

“You could, if we wrapped you in plastic wrap and I stood in there with you to hold you up.” Richie hands him a grilled cheese sandwich. It’s his specialty. 

Eddie ignores his offer and says, “I’m one big fucking germ at this point. I’m festering.”

“Gross,” Richie tells him. He keeps his eyes stubbornly on Eddie’s face, rather than his very firm-looking chest. “You’d die of a conniption before the infection got you.”

“I’ll show _you_ a conniption,” Eddie mutters, and picks up his sandwich. 

Richie tries not to sigh fondly at the sight of Eddie lying around complaining about infections. Instead, he says, “No joke, Eds, _when_ did you get so ripped?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Eddie says, rolling his eyes. 

“I’m _sorry_ for admiring your physique,” Richie says. “I’m just confused, because you’re a fucking dweeb in polos with a nerdy office job but you have, like. Pecs.”

“The office has a gym,” Eddie mutters around a bite of food. “And it gave me an excuse to get out of the house earlier, which was always a plus.”

“Oh,” Richie says, and wonders if maybe he shouldn’t have said anything. Which is, in general, his constant state of being. Richie fucking Trashmouth Tozier. 

“Anyway,” Eddie says, brushing it off. “By the time these come off, I’ll be looking more like you.”

“What, rakishly handsome?”

He relishes Eddie’s eyeroll. 

Richie sits down after that, in the armchair perpendicular to the couch, with his own sandwich. They eat quietly for a few minutes, Eddie taking tiny bites and chewing slowly, like he’s still scared of choking. Richie knows it’s probably more to combat the nausea that comes with a stomach wound and Vicodin, but it makes him smile anyway. Most things about Eddie’s general existence and alive-ness make Richie smile these days. It’s honestly kind of pathetic. 

He lets his eyes linger, a little. Over Eddie’s greasy hair and stubbly face and tired eyes. And then his strong shoulders and toned chest and narrow waist. He’s changed a bit since Richie last saw him. Is no longer scrawny and feeble and cute as hell. Is now _broad_ and subtly _built_. And also _gay._

Richie’s heart jumps into his throat. He’s been trying not to think about that too much. And has subsequently been obsessing about it, but in a way that he’s trying not to put any words to, so that it’s just a vague undercurrent of _wanting to know_, all mixed into the general _want_. He opens his mouth and bites back bullshit four separate times. He hopes Eddie will say something, just to nudge him onto some other train of thought. But Eddie doesn’t. And Richie’s big fucking mouth opens. 

What ends up coming out is, “So. Little Eddie Spaghetti is queer, huh.”

Eddie’s eyes flick up to him and he says, voice tight, “Shut the fuck up, Richie, you came out first.”

“No, I know.” Richie wonders, distantly, how much _Eddie’s_ been thinking about it. “I’m just saying. Go figure.”

“Go figure _me?_ Go figure _you_. King of _I fucked your mom_ jokes?” 

Richie barks out a laugh. “_I fucked your dad_ just doesn’t roll off the tongue the same way.” Eddie snorts, eyes on his plate. “Also, we grew up in Derry. In the 80s.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, and they both sigh. 

There’s a long, tense silence, and then Richie says, suspecting he might regret it, “So when did you figure it out?”

“Hm? I don’t know. I didn’t.” Eddie picks up crumbs with his fingertip. “I’m still figuring it out. I’ve been figuring it out for thirty years.”

“God. Yeah.” Richie laughs again, but much more subdued this time. 

“You?”

Richie’s head jerks up. “Huh?”

Eddie meets his gaze levelly, just for a few seconds. “How’d you know?”

“Oh.” Richie swallows, and thinks about it. A hot summer afternoon, and a hammock, and socked feet in his face. Sweaty fingers wrapped around his ankle, and skin pressed up against skin. So much fucking skin. “Goddamn...legs.”

Eddie gives him an odd look. “What?”

Richie quirks a wry smile and takes a swig from his cup of orange juice. “One pair of goddamn legs.”

Eddie blinks slowly, and says, “There’s something wrong with you.”

“Yeah, well.” Richie grins. “We already knew that.”

He tries, and hopefully succeeds, to not look like he would swallow Eddie whole if given half the chance. He doesn’t think that would really help his case. 

Eddie has gone through a butterfly transformation since they were kids. Not a whole lot has changed for Richie. Same song, different tune. Nobody pines like Richie Tozier.


	4. Chapter 4

After four days out of the hospital, Eddie breaks. 

“Richie, you know it will literally kill me to say this,” he says, eyes intense and mouth set. “But please, _please_ help me wash my hair.”

Richie pauses in the middle of sweeping the floor, the _last_ thing Eddie told him he had to do in order to avoid instantaneous death. Richie is learning all sorts of things about what will kill Eddie Kaspbrak this week. “Seriously?”

Eddie looks at him balefully from the couch. The dark circles under his eyes haven’t really reduced by much, but he _has_ removed his cheek bandage at last, where his wound is a tender pink scar in his scruffy cheek. “I can’t stand it anymore. I feel like I can feel a scalp infection setting in. It’s disgusting.”

“Okay, gross,” Richie says. “What do you need me to do?”

“I don’t know. I can’t stand in the shower. Does it have a detachable shower head?”

Richie shakes his head. “Nope. Neither does the sink.”

Eddie sighs gustily. “I don’t know. Can you wash it over the sink like in the salon?”

“Probably?” Richie shrugs. “It might end in disaster but we can give it a go.”

Eddie gives him a look. “Seriously? You’re not even gonna give me a hard time about it?”

Richie snorts. “I can if you want. If you want the full experience—a hair wash and and some good-natured shit-talking.”

“No, shut up. Will you seriously wash my hair?”

Richie looks at him, and his wan face and wrinkled clothes and unshaven beard, so opposite the neat, fussy Eddie Kaspbrak he once knew. And he looks at Eddie’s greasy hair, which _is_ honestly kind of disturbingly gross. And he thinks about how much Eddie must be _truly_ dying inside, if even Richie feels a little grossed out by it, and it’s not even on his own head. “Yeah, sure,” he says. “What’s a little scalp massage between friends?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Eddie says. “I could fucking kiss you.”

Richie’s heart skips an embarrassing beat, and he bites his tongue. “Just wait till you feel my scalp massage,” he says around the lump in his throat. 

Eddie doesn’t respond. He’s already attempting to get up and head for the bathroom. 

They get him settled into a chair in front of the bathroom sink, which is lower than the kitchen one, closer to shoulder height when he’s sitting. He struggles out of his shirt, complaining that it’ll just get wet, and then leans back in his chair, tips his head back to rest on the cold ceramic edge of the sink, and then waits, eyes closed. 

Richie finds his bottle of shampoo, a cup, and closes his own eyes, for a second. He’s been this close to Eddie, and closer, a hundred times in the past two weeks. He has been all up in Eddie’s business for _twelve days_ now. But somehow this feels...personal. It feels kind of _intimate._

And Eddie’s eyes are closed. And his face is tipped up towards Richie, like he’s waiting. 

Richie cuts off that thought before it can form and turns on the water. 

“Oh, this is nasty,” he says, running his fingers through Eddie’s hair to comb it out while the water warms up. “Seriously, Eds, I think you could grow mushrooms in here.”

“Mmm,” Eddie says, and sighs when Richie fills up his cup with water and pours it over his head. “Oh, this feels...very nice.”

“When I graduate from housewifery, I’m going to become a hairstylist,” Richie tells him, wetting all of his hair. “You’re my first test subject.”

“I will never in my life let you anywhere near my head with scissors,” Eddie tells him gravely. “I think it’s wet enough.”

“Don’t tell me how to do my job.” Richie squeezes shampoo into his palm and starts lathering it into Eddie’s hair gently. “There you go. Six layers of oil just came off.”

Eddie hums in a way that is near orgasmic. Richie immediately feels his face go hot. “This feels _so good_,” Eddie says, in a way that sounds like he’s cranky about it. 

About a thousand innuendoes spring to Richie’s mind, and he bites them back, rubbing his hands through Eddie’s sudsy hair. He tries really hard to get all of it, tries to scrub it all clean, just so that he won’t have to do this again for a while. But it’s...a lot, for him. Emotionally. Standing pressed right up against Eddie’s bare shoulder, cradling his head in his hands, his thumbs on either temple. And seeing Eddie there with his eyes closed, completely trusting, lips parted slightly. Eddie can’t see him. Richie can look for as long as he wants. 

Or that’s what he thinks, at least, until he realizes he’s been still for too long and Eddie’s eyes have blinked open, and Richie’s been staring at his lips for ten seconds too long. Richie’s heart jumps, and he reaches out to pour water over Eddie’s hair, but instead manages to slop half a cup-full over himself and Eddie’s face. 

Eddie splutters, startled, and Richie hisses, “Shit, shit, sorry. I’m...clumsy.”

“Trying to drown me?” Eddie asks, pressing down over his wound so that he can cough a little water up. “Fucking ow.”

“I’m _sorry_,” Richie says. “I’m fired. I’ve fired myself from this job.”

“Don’t you dare, I’d rather drown than have hair this gross again,” Eddie says. He squints up at Richie. “You have water all over yourself.”

Indeed, Richie’s been spilling all over the sink and himself this entire time, and his shirt is sopping wet at the front. He shrugs. “It’s water, Eds, not poison.”

“You could have taken off your shirt for this, too,” Eddie points out. 

Richie has to snort. “Fuck, if this was a shitty gay porno, maybe.”

Eddie’s face colours, high in his cheeks above his facial hair, and he looks away. “Okay, yeah, maybe. But it would have made sense.”

“Only because you’re queer, Eds, only because you’re queer.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Eddie mutters, but there’s no bite to it. “I was just saying.”

“Stop trying to get me to take off my clothes and just enjoy my special massage, you pervert,” Richie says, and gets back to rinsing out his hair. 

“Every day I hate you so much,” Eddie tells him. 

_I want to kiss you so bad_, Richie wants to say, like a total fucking sap. _God, I want to kiss you._ Instead, he says, “If you say that, I won’t wash your hair for you again.”

Eddie’s eyes are closed again, and his tongue flicks out to wet his lips. Richie has to mentally wrench himself back from diving forward to do something insane. “Don’t stop,” Eddie hums, and Richie realizes his hands froze without his consent again. “I’ll do anything.”

Richie clears his throat and keeps rinsing. He doesn’t dare himself to respond to that at all.

*

Eddie becomes more mobile, over time. In the beginning his middle was so sore and sensitive to any tensing of his abs that he needed help with everything, just to keep the pressure off. But as he heals up he’s able to shuffle around on his own, and only ever asks for help getting up and sometimes sitting down. That seems to improve his mood, a little. Having some semblance of independence. He can get to the bathroom to wash his hands and face, and with some effort he can even take a quick shower. He can get his own food and water, if nothing’s on too high or low of a shelf. He can look out the window if he wants.

They go back to the hospital for a check-up, and the doctors say everything looks good, that he’s healing up well. 

“It’s because he’s put the fear of god into his body,” Richie tells them, while Eddie rolls his eyes as the nurse helps him back into his shirt. “His stomach doesn’t want to know what will happen if it doesn’t close up.”

“It’s because I actually take _care_ of my body, moron,” Eddie says. 

Privately, Richie suspects it has something to do with how fervently he wished for Eddie to get better, back under Neibolt. And maybe with his near-constant prayers to any supernatural entity that may yet exist. Derry’s always been something close to magical. Richie is more than willing to take advantage of that. 

Things get better. Or at least, some things get better. 

Richie jerks awake from a vague nightmare for the nineteenth night in a row—as he has every single night since returning to Derry. It’s almost a ritual, at this point. Panting into the still night air, rubbing his hands over his eyes, turning over on the creaky couch bed, pressing a palm to his chest as if he can slow his racing hear that way. Trying to purge every horrific image burned into his eyelids. Blinking them open when he fails. 

He nearly has a heart attack when he sees Eddie standing in the entryway to the hall, leaning against the wall in his t-shirt and sleep shorts. His eyes are dark and tired, and he’s watching Richie silently. 

“What are you doing up?” Richie croaks, voice hoarse. “Go back to bed.”

Eddie doesn’t move, jaw working as he props himself up against the wall. 

“Is something wrong?” Richie asks, concern gnawing at his stomach. 

“I.” Eddie’s voice is low and rough. “I wanted to make sure you were still here.”

That would worry Richie, if he wasn’t so familiar with the feeling. He checked in on Eddie three times a night at the beginning—still does at least once, most nights. “Still here,” he confirms, sitting up and scrubbing at his eyes. “On this...ugly-ass couch. Go back to bed, yeah? You look like you’re in pain.”

Eddie is quiet, hand on his stomach to the left of his bandages. He looks at Richie unblinkingly. Sometimes, Richie worries that he’s looking at a spectre, somehow, that this is another impossibly cruel trick from It, that Eddie’s going to collapse into a rotting corpse any second now, or worse. 

He tries to shake it off. “Need anything?”

Eddie huffs into the silence. “Do you...mind if I stay?”

Richie’s throat closes up. “Eds, don’t be an idiot.”

Immediately, Eddie’s face shutters, and he looks away. 

“If we’re gonna share a bed, it’s yours.”

Richie’s panic at having made the suggestion is made completely worth it by the crooked smile Eddie shoots him. “Okay,” he says quietly, and turns around to start shuffling back to his room. 

Richie doesn’t move for a second, a little stunned by this turn of events, and then scrambles out of his godawful couch bed and into Eddie’s room to help him ease back down to the bed. And then he goes around to crawl into the other side of the bed, keeping his mouth shut, his eyes averted. He doesn’t want this to be weird. He’s not going to make it weird. 

It’s still weird, no matter what he does. They lie side-by-side in the bed, and Richie closes his eyes, and it’s overwhelming, in a way. To be so close, under the blankets like this. Eddie used to hate anyone being in his bed. Used to bitch about it all the time, when Richie climbed into his as kids. But he’s not saying anything about it now, just lying there on his back breathing into the night, a little laboured from the pain of lying down. And he’s so close to Richie, and everything smells like antiseptic and sickness but also like Eddie, who has always kind of smelled like those things anyway. Richie presses his face into his pillow and breathes it in, shameful. 

He falls asleep pretty quickly, all things considered. He’s perpetually sleep-deprived, so that helps, and this bed is also a thousand times more comfortable than the couch. It doesn’t take long for him to drift off. 

He wakes up again maybe an hour later—fuck if he knows—to the sound of Eddie breathing hard and coughing. Richie is groggy and confused, his eyes glued shut with exhaustion, but something in him reacts with concern, at least. Eddie groans in pain, and Richie reaches across the space between them, finds the warm skin of Eddie’s side, under the hem of his shirt. Slides his palm over, to the bandage over his wound, and presses down. He knows, even in this half-asleep state, that Eddie needs to brace the wound when he coughs if he doesn’t want to risk tearing something. Eddie coughs again, and Richie presses his hand tighter over his stomach, moving closer so he’ll have better leverage. His knees touch the side of Eddie’s leg. Eddie quiets, moans softly, and then settles. Richie breathes in deep. 

He means to pull away when he’s sure Eddie is done. He falls asleep before he can. 

The next time he wakes up, it’s _still fucking dark_, and Richie’s twitching from another nightmare, fading rapidly but still filling him with dread and sense memories of blood and horror. Deadlights, he thinks vaguely. It doesn’t matter. He’s on his side, and one knee is still pressed into Eddie’s thigh, and his hand is still splayed across Eddie’s stomach, but no longer over the wound. Instead, it’s flat across his upper abs, soaking in the warmth of his skin, his fingertips probably about three inches from nipples Richie is fairly sure he’s had explicit dreams about. 

Richie would pull his hand away and berate himself, but it’s the middle of the night, or maybe very early morning, and he still feels like he can smell Eddie’s blood in his nose, and feel it under his hands. He can still remember holding his jacket to Eddie’s bleeding stomach, and the feeling of his breaths coming fast and shallow under his palm. He can still remember seeing Eddie die, right there in front of him, and sometimes he forgets it only actually happened in the deadlights. 

He doesn’t move. 

Time passes. Richie doesn’t know how much, or if he falls back asleep at any point, or if he’s even all that awake in the first place. Everything is quiet, and very still, and peaceful. And then Eddie starts whimpering, quiet at first but getting a little louder, his breath hitching, arms moving restlessly at his sides. In the grey half-light of pre-dawn, Richie can see his face pinching. God, they’re both a mess. 

Automatically, Richie slides his hand lower, over his bandages again, to make sure he’s ready in case he starts coughing. 

But he doesn’t. Instead, his eyes snap open, and he turns his head to the side to look at Richie in the dark, breaths still coming fast. 

Richie blinks, and realizes for the first time that he’s a lot closer than he needs to be. Maybe a foot of space between their faces, close enough that they’re sharing the same breath. Richie swallows thickly, and wonders if it’d be too telling if he pulled away. 

But then Eddie reaches out with the hand closest to Richie, crosses the space between them like it’s nothing, or like not crossing it is more of a loss than daring to do it. His fingertips, warm from being under the blankets, press into Richie’s cheek, slide across his pillow to cradle the side of his face. Richie holds his breath, and then exhales shakily as Eddie’s thumb traces over the arch of his eyebrow, and then under his eye. Everything is blurry without his glasses on, and shadowy in the dark, but he can see Eddie’s wide brown eyes, dark with fear, and his parted lips, panting into the stillness between them. He’s still scared. Richie understands that fear. 

He also understands the yawning, cavernous want that consumes him in the same moment, the way it makes his chest tight with yearning, the way it makes his stomach plunge with knowing he might never have it. He wets his lips and looks at Eddie. 

Eddie, who is levering himself onto his side, groaning softly through it, just so that he can inch closer, tip his head forward. Richie bites his tongue, and nearly makes an audible sound when Eddie lets their foreheads touch. He closes his eyes; they’re breathing the same warm air. 

“Every time I close my eyes I see you and you’re gone,” Eddie whispers, voice rough. “You’re dead.”

Richie nods shakily, not daring to open his eyes. He feels a gentle thumb at the corner of his mouth, and it makes him tremble. _Maybe_, he thinks, _maybe? What if?_ “In a world where you didn’t get out of there, Eds, I think I’d rather be,” he breathes. 

It sounds stupid, it’s corny as fuck, but right now, in the dark of the night and the trembling moments after twin nightmares, it’s the truth. And Richie needs to say it. 

Eddie’s breath hitches, and he breathes it out shakily, an inch from Richie’s mouth. Richie bites back a sound. “Sometimes,” Eddie says, voice impossibly soft, “I have to wait all night until you come in to find out you’re alive.”

“I’ll stay in here,” Richie says, swallowing hard. God, he never thought— He can’t even _imagine_— But until now, Eddie couldn’t get out of bed. Unlike Richie, he couldn’t just get up after every nightmare to check on him, to see him there, alive and breathing, like Richie checked on Eddie. He just had to wait there, alone in the dark, until morning. “I’ll stay here.”

“I can’t make you—” 

“I’ll _stay in here_,” Richie says, firm and unmoving. “You’re— You’re not the only one who has nightmares.”

There’s a moment of shaky silence, and then Eddie says, “Okay.”

“Consider it a favour to me,” Richie says, and squeezes his eyes shut tighter as a thumb rubs along his stubbled cheek. “That couch bed is shit.”

Eddie scoffs a laugh, and then groans. “Okay,” he says, even quieter. 

Their breaths slow. Eddie withdraws his hand, and moves back to his own pillow, but doesn’t go far. Still, Richie feels his absence viscerally. He can still feel the ghost of his thumb at the edge of his mouth. God, how he wants. So desperately he thinks he might die of it. 

But his desire to see Eddie alive and healthy and happy is stronger. And—and Eddie just got out of a terrible relationship. It’s not even official, yet—the divorce. Richie’s not going to, to push him. To push him into something he probably doesn’t even _want_. He’s not going to add shit to the pile weighing down Eddie’s shoulders every second of every day. They both have enough shit to deal with. 

He’s not going to do anything. But god, _god_ he wants. It might be the only thing he’s ever been really good at.


	5. Chapter 5

“So, Tozier? What’s the news.”

Richie yawns, sitting on the couch with his feet up on the cushions, laptop balanced on his knees. Bev grins at him from the screen, looking the happiest Richie’s maybe ever seen her. “Not much news,” he says. “We barely leave the house. Derry’s still standing, though. No more clowns.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Bev says. “No other horrifying monsters, either?”

“None that I’ve encountered,” Richie says. “Except Eddie when I don’t immediately wash a dirty dish.”

Bev snorts. “And how’s Mr. Spaghetti? You don’t send us enough updates.”

“My man is shy,” Richie says. “He’s doing good. Shaving right now, for the first time in three weeks. He’s in raptures.”

“Oh, I can imagine.” Bev chuckles fondly. “He’s healing up then?”

“Yeah. Mobility’s a lot better, so he’s in a much better mood now. You know, comparatively. Still spends most of his time bitching at me, but now it’s just for fun rather than necessity.”

“That’s our Eddie,” Bev laughs. “I’m glad he’s feeling better.”

“He is.” And Richie pointedly doesn’t mention that things have gotten a lot better now that they start every night side-by-side in their shared bed, and wake up every morning touching, a hand on a hip or knuckles against an arm. He doesn’t even mention it to _himself_. It’s truly a mixture of heaven and hell for Richie, but he’ll take it over anything else. 

He doesn’t say that, but for some reason he _does_ say, “Only three more weeks until we can have sex again.”

Bev stares at him and says, with feeling, “What.”

Richie’s face flushes. “That was a joke. The doctor thinks I’m like. His husband or something. He told us not to have sex for six weeks. Three weeks down, three to go!” He smiles weakly. 

Bev gives him a look, like she’s staring straight into his soul through the webcam. Richie feels like he is on fire. 

He clears his throat. “Anyway. He seems happier. It’s nice seeing him smiling every now and then.” He does, and it is. Makes Richie want to kiss him all the time, though. It’s a constant struggle. 

He doesn’t tell Bev this. He suspects, from the way she looks at him, that she knows anyway. Sometimes Richie suspects that Bev has always known. 

She doesn’t get a chance to say anything, though, because a second later the bathroom door opens, and out walks Eddie, dressed in his soft little sleep shorts and a new t-shirt he made Richie buy for him, looking fresh-faced and cute as fuck. 

“Hey, Eds,” Richie says a bit too loudly, so that Bev doesn’t say anything that will ruin his life. “All good?”

Eddie nods, shooting him a crooked smile. For a while, his dimples were lost under his overgrown facial hair. Richie missed them. 

“Come say hi to Bev,” Richie says, tipping the laptop towards him. 

“Hi Bev,” Eddie says, moving to sit down gingerly on the other side of the couch, next to Richie’s feet. He picks up a book from the side table. 

Richie turns the laptop so that Bev can see him. “Behold, Eddie Kaspbrak in the wild.”

“That’s a lot of leg, Kaspbrak,” Bev says with a laugh. 

Eddie hums and looks up at her with a smile. “The AC in here is shit. The less sweaty I am, the less disgusting I feel before I decide to risk my guts again to shower.”

“Please, keep your guts inside your body,” Bev says, and Richie turns her back around to face him. 

“He’s not lying, it’s hot as balls in here,” Richie confirms. “I think we have to call our landlord, because it’s been getting steadily grosser.”

“Rich refuses to wear anything but boxers in the house now. It’s a problem,” Eddie says. 

Bev raises her eyebrows at him. Richie avoids her eyes. 

They chat a little more after that, about what Ben’s up to and Richie’s last disastrous trip to the grocery store on his own and who heard from Mike last. Bev sends Richie a picture that Stan sent her from Atlanta. 

“What about you?” she asks. “Going back to LA?”

Richie feels Eddie tense up where he’s sitting half on Richie’s toes. He doesn’t look up from his book. 

Richie shrugs. “Not sure yet. Gonna finish things up here in Derry first. Then decide...what comes next.”

“Enjoying your vacation too much?” Bev says wryly. 

Richie snorts. “Beats relaxing on a beach, that’s for sure. Nothing says vacation like being a nursemaid in smalltown Maine after a clown murder.” He sniffs. “I’m not gonna stay here forever. But, well.” He forces himself not to glance up at Eddie. “We’ll see what happens.”

“Yeah,” Bev says, and smiles at him. “Anyway, I better go. You guys take care, alright? Keep me better updated.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Richie rolls his eyes. “See ya, Bev. Say hi to Ben for us.”

“Will do. Bye, Eddie!”

“Bye, Bev,” Eddie says, a smile tugging at his lips. 

Richie ends the call, and then spends a few minutes sending the Losers updates from the past week, prognoses and pictures that Eddie will kill him for sending. He smiles and responds to a message from Bill, opens an email from his agent that he’s been avoiding. 

On the other side of the couch, Eddie shifts, lifts his book, lowers it again, and then makes a frustrated sound before turning and lifting his legs onto the couch between them. Richie’s legs are already there, but Eddie just tangles them together, face pinched as he twists his torso a little, and then settles. Richie holds his breath. Eddie props his book up against his thighs and wraps his free hand around Richie’s ankle, next to his hip. 

It’s...a lot. Richie knows this is probably nothing and everyone else would agree that this is nothing but Richie can barely handle it. Eddie’s legs are bare in his little shorts, and Richie’s are bare below the hems of his boxers, and there’s so much warm skin pressed together, much more than Richie is emotionally equipped to handle. 

It feels incredibly intimate, here on their tiny couch, and it also feels painfully familiar. It reminds Richie, viscerally, of sitting in the hammock in the clubhouse when they were thirteen. Eddie climbed in with him all the time, mostly to be a nuisance, their skinny bare legs knocking together in the middle. Sometimes, back then, Eddie would press his socked foot directly over Richie’s crotch, because he knew Richie would bolt out of the hammock immediately if he did, though usually not without an accompanying ass-whooping. Richie shivers, twenty-seven years later, at the memory. 

But sometimes Eddie would just sit there, reading a comic book or laughing at Richie’s Voices or dozing off in the lazy summer heat. Fingers curled loosely around Richie’s ankle, just like they are now, probably to keep it there so that Richie wouldn’t kick him in the nose. Thumb rubbing lightly along his instep. 

God, Richie always thought about kissing him then. Usually not explicitly—Richie always tried to convince himself it was just curiosity, back then—but he thought about it. And once, like today, he thought about it very intently. Eddie’s legs were all pressed up against his and he was grinning down at his comic book because Richie had made a dumb joke at someone else’s expense and he was so fucking cute. Gave as good as he got. And he kept poking Richie’s side with his toe, so Richie grabbed his foot, pressed his thumb into the arch. Eddie had made a sound, kind of between a whimper and a groan. He looked at Richie hotly and said, “No fair.”

And Richie was a goner. _God_, he had wanted to kiss him. Right then, right there, Richie wanted to kiss him more than he wanted to do anything else in the world, and he almost did it. He almost risked it all just to kiss Eddie Kaspbrak’s cute fucking face one time. 

That was the first time he thought about it, and he never stopped thinking about it after that, not until he left Derry and forgot Eddie completely. And now in the present, Richie grabs Eddie’s foot and presses a thumb into the arch, and Eddie groans again, almost like he did back then. And then he wiggles his toes like he’s asking for a foot massage, still staring down at his book. 

Richie opens his mouth, and what comes out is, “Remember when we did this as kids?” He swallows, and his face heats up, and his heart thumps loudly. And he says, “I really wanted to kiss you then.”

Eddie drops his book. He looks up at Richie. “What?”

Richie feels like he might be about to throw up. “Remember, in the clubhouse? In the hammock?”

“Of course I remember the fucking hammock, Richie,” Eddie says, as if all of them hadn’t forgotten their entire childhoods until three weeks ago. “You wanted to _kiss me?_” 

“Really bad,” Richie croaks, nodding. His hand is still on Eddie’s foot and he’s scared that if he takes it off he’ll give himself away. “Back then.”

Eddie breathes hard through his nose. His eyes are wide and he’s looking at Richie like he might be able to see right into his brain if he looks hard enough. Gears are turning, visibly, behind his eyes. A fire is starting. He opens his mouth and says, “Oh my fucking god, Richie, was I your gay awakening?”

Richie laughs out loud, his chest so tight it’s painful. He takes off his glasses and cleans them on his shirt, just so that he doesn’t have to look at Eddie. “Yeah,” he says, rueful. “Yeah, you definitely were.”

“What the _fuck_, Richie,” Eddie says, and Richie’s heart skips a horrified beat. Shit, fuck, he ruined it, he shouldn’t have said anything— “If you’re messing with me, I swear to god, I will kill you. I will _kill you_.” 

“I’m not!” Richie says, despite that being the perfect escape. “I’m not, Eds, I swear to god. You were cute as fuck and I had a big fucking crush on you.”

“You had a _crush on me?_” 

He says it as if he can’t imagine anyone ever having a crush on him. It’s absurd. “Dude, yeah, a _massive one._” It feels as good to say as it is terrifying. “I think I wanted to marry you. Among other things.”

“Jesus _Christ_.” Eddie is staring at him like he can’t believe this is happening. His cheeks are pink and his jaw is slack and Richie has to grip his laptop tightly just to anchor himself. 

He takes a short, steadying breath. “Why, did you have a crush on _me?_” 

“No, Richie!” Eddie says, and it hits Richie like a gunshot until he adds, “I was six leagues deep in the closet!”

Richie coughs out a laugh. “Yeah, okay.”

“I just wanted to be _close_ to you,” Eddie says, and his eyes widen like he’s just realizing it as he says it. “All the fucking time.”

Richie blinks in surprise, and then swallows hard. “Yeah?”

Eddie meets his gaze for another second, and then flicks his eyes away. “Why do you think I was always climbing into that fucking hammock?”

Richie’s grip spasms a little on Eddie’s foot. “To be a piece of shit?”

Eddie laughs a little, and he bites his lip. “I wanted you to touch me.”

“Yeah?” Richie swallows thickly, and presses his thumb into the sole of Eddie’s foot. 

Eddie makes a sound deep in his throat that shoots straight down Richie’s spine. His fingers curl tighter around Richie’s ankle, and his eyes are intense as he meets Richie’s gaze. 

Heart in his throat, Richie drags the pad of his thumb over the sensitive arch. Eddie hisses out a sound and says, “Fuck, Rich.”

“Remember when you used to press your foot against my dick?” Richie says breathlessly. 

Eddie huffs out a laugh. “Oh, fuck. You got a fetish, Trashmouth?”

“No, fuckwad, I was in love with you.”

Eddie makes a soft, wheezy sound. His eyes are so dark that it’s making Richie shiver. “Rich, you fucking asshole,” he says, and for a second Richie thinks he must assume he’s joking again. But then he says, “Are you going to kiss me or what?”

Richie’s jaw drops. Blood rushes in his ears; his heart hammers against his ribs. “What?”

Eddie meets his eyes evenly, fire behind them. “I can’t _fucking_ move without tearing something, so are you going to get up and fucking kiss me or _not?_” 

For a second, Richie is completely gobsmacked. He never thought— and even if Eddie _did_, Richie never expected him to just come out and _say something_. But Eddie has been surprising him since they were kids. And Richie was the only one who ever saw how brave he was. He’s seeing how brave he is again, right now. God, _fuck_, Richie loves him. 

“Well?” Eddie snaps, and doubt flashes behind his eyes for the first time. 

“Holy shit,” Richie breathes, and pushes his laptop to the floor so he can scramble up onto his knees. 

Eddie’s eyes flash, and smiles crookedly, saying, “Careful—”

“I’m being fucking careful,” Richie says, pushing Eddie’s bent knees down so that he can straddle them, his heart pounding wildly. “Just—” He braces his hands against the arm of the couch that Eddie is leaning against, and stares down at him, breathing hard. “Eds—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Eddie says, and yanks him down by the front of his shirt. 

Their mouths meet roughly, so hard it hurts a little, and Richie gasps into it. One of his hands flies up to Eddie’s face, and he cradles his cheek gently, tilts it up so that he can tip his head to the side and fit their mouths together. And then it’s _incredible_. God, it’s incredible. Eddie’s mouth is hot and slick and firm, kissing him hard, and one of the hands clutched in his shirt lets go to skate up and down his side. Richie hums, sucks on his lower lip. Eddie lets out a reedy moan. 

“God,” Richie says against his mouth, “_shit_. Still, Eds, still.”

“Huh?” Eddie pushes a hand under the hem of his shirt and presses his thumb into one of Richie’s nipples. 

Richie arches his back and groans. “I still want to kiss you.”

Eddie laughs, right against his lips. “Well thank god for that.” 

“I still have a big fucking crush on you,” Richie tells him, and slides his tongue into Eddie’s mouth, just to keep him from snarking back. 

It’s the best fucking thing Richie’s ever felt in his life. He’s kissed people before—obviously—but it was never like this. It never gripped him at the back of his stomach and pulled, it never rushed through his blood like this, never made his eyes burn and his heart beat in his tongue. He kisses Eddie with everything he has, holds his face steady and licks behind his teeth, drags his bottom teeth over his lip, sucks on his tongue. Beneath him, Eddie groans and kisses him back, long and hard, and his hands are everywhere, digging into Richie’s back, curling in his hair, rubbing over his chest. He hooks a finger into the waist of Richie’s boxers and Richie hitches his hips forwards automatically. Eddie’s hips are too far away to make contact, but the movement makes Richie whine anyway, like he can feel the impression of the pressure that could have been there racing up his spine. 

“Fuck, fuck, Richie,” Eddie gasps, pulling away. “We can’t, I’ll fucking bust something.”

“I can’t _kiss you?_” Richie says incredulously. 

“God, _no_, if you stop I’ll kill you. Just don’t— Fuck. Keep it in your pants, I don’t want to end up back in the hospital.”

Richie laughs out loud, and catches Eddie’s lips again, once, twice. “You better tell me you like me back, asshole.”

“Oh, god.” Eddie groans as Richie presses a biting kiss to his jaw. “Are we gonna pass notes in class? Do you like me, circle yes or no?” 

“Eddie, oh my god. I carved our initials— _Eddie. I carved our initials into the kissing bridge_.” 

“No,” Eddie says, and pushes Richie away to look at him. “Seriously?”

Richie nods, trembling a little. He still can’t really believe this is happening. “I’ll show you.”

“I think I saw it,” Eddie says breathlessly. “I think I saw it when we were kids and thought of you.”

Richie breaks out into a grin. “You had a crush on me.”

Eddie’s eyes go soft, and he presses his thumb against the corner of Richie’s mouth. “Still fucking do.”

And Richie can’t _not_ kiss him when he says that, a little wildly, maybe a little aggressively. Eddie doesn’t complain, though, biting back, pushing his tongue into Richie’s mouth. Like he’s been wanting to for a long time. Like he’s thought about it, even half as much as Richie has. He holds onto Richie’s chin and kisses him with more passion than Richie knows how to handle, and yeah, fine, it makes him lose his mind a little. Maybe it makes him give Eddie a truly impressive hickey, high on his throat. So fucking what. 

He’s waited twenty-seven years for this.


	6. Chapter 6

Possibly the best feeling in the world is waking up to Eddie Kaspbrak’s frowning face. 

He’s not even awake. He’s not even conscious enough to be frowning at Richie, and yet he is, mouth pursed, brow wrinkled. His hand is pushed up the back of Richie’s shirt and his legs are tangled with Richie’s under the blankets and his hair is everywhere, and Richie’s heart squeezes painfully. His chest feels light and his head, for once, isn’t pounding. It takes him a while to figure out why, apart from the fact that there’s a man in Richie’s arms and he’s in love with him. 

He slept through the night. As far as he can remember, he didn’t wake up _once_. No nightmares. No scares from Eddie. Nothing. Eight or maybe even nine hours of uninterrupted sleep. Richie hasn’t had that in _years_. 

He grins, breathes in deep, and presses his face up against Eddie’s, less of a kiss and more of a smushing. He has one hand on the back of Eddie’s thigh, pressed into warm, soft skin, and he slides it up to cup his ass through his sleep shorts, and then farther up to smooth over his hip and waist. Eddie hums softly in his sleep, his brow smoothing out. Richie smiles, and skates around the bandages on his back to run his fingers up Eddie’s spine, breathing slow and even and feeling the gentle expansion and contraction of his ribs. Still breathing. It makes Richie grateful every single time. 

He spends a few minutes touching every inch of Eddie he can reach, palming the broad muscles of his back and shoulders and stroking through his hair at the back of his head and rubbing over his thigh. He pretends it’s something of an injury check at first, and then gives in and admits to himself that he just wants to touch him. He wants to touch him all over, as much as he can. All the time, forever. Eddie is warm and solid against him and Richie wants to stay here tangled up in him for the rest of his life. The shock of having him here has not worn off. Thirteen-year-old Richie Tozier is still stunned. 

Forty-year-old Richie Tozier is pushing a hand up the front of his shirt to thumb at his nipple, something he has quickly discovered Eddie likes and which Richie plans to exploit at every opportunity. Eddie hums, pressing into it semi-consciously, hips twitching. 

Richie grins, nuzzling into his neck and sliding the pad of his thumb around his nipple. He loves knowing this thing that Eddie likes, that makes him feel good. He wants to find out more. He wants to find out every single one. 

“Guh,” Eddie mutters against Richie’s temple, squirming against him. 

“Hey, baby,” Richie croons, tipping his face up. 

Eddie presses his mouth against Richie’s forehead and says, “You better not be about to kiss me before you’ve brushed your teeth.”

Richie grins and pulls back to plant a sloppy kiss on his jaw, and then untangles himself to scamble out of bed and into the bathroom, fumbling for his toothbrush. He catches himself beaming into the mirror above the sink. It’s pathetic, and Richie loves it. 

Two minutes later he’s crawling back into bed, into Eddie’s waiting arms, and pressing his mouth against Eddie’s indulgently because he, for one, does not give a shit about morning breath. In fact, all he cares about is kissing the absolute living hell out of the man in his bed, and not getting up until he’s satisfied, which will maybe be never. 

“Mmf,” Eddie says against his lips, reciprocating clumsily. “You’re kind of gross.”

“Yeah,” Richie agrees, and licks into his mouth. 

Eddie sighs, and brings one hand up to touch Richie’s face gently, like he’s made of glass. They’ve been doing this for a couple days now, and even though Eddie’s the one who instigated it, he’s still the one who has moments of reticence, who holds back and gets shy. Richie supposes that’s fair—Eddie’s still _technically_ married, although he’s been emailing back and forth with his lawyer, and he has more...baggage. And Richie’s had more time to sort of come to terms with...everything. His feelings and being gay and all that. He might have forgotten about it for twenty-something years, but it had come back to him pretty quickly. There are still parts of it that are hard, parts of it that might be hard for a long time, but. Eddie makes it easy. 

Which is a gross and embarrassing thought to have, so Richie pushes it out of his head, and pushes his hands down to Eddie’s thighs, dragging his fingertips along sensitive skin before hitching one of Eddie’s legs over his hip, pressing them close together. Eddie hums, busy sliding his tongue against Richie’s, and curls a hand in Richie’s hair. Richie trails his mouth away to suck a new mark into Eddie’s neck and rubs his hand up Eddie’s thigh, over his ass, slipping his fingers just under the waistband and pressing him closer.

Eddie groans, hips shifting, and says, "God. Stop making me want to have sex with you." 

Richie chuckles, grinning stupidly. "I just can't help being this irresistible."

Eddie mouths at his jaw hotly and says, "Orgasming would be so fucking painful right now." 

"Oh, Jesus," Richie half-groans, half-laughs. Something about Eddie saying that word to him, in the context of sex with _Richie_, makes him horny as hell in a confusing way because it's not a sexy word. It's really not. But it's possible he thought about this a _lot_ as a teenager before he left Derry. 

They make out for another minute or two, soft and warm and never heated enough to really turn into anything, even on Richie's end. And it's good. Richie teases and goads, but he doesn't mind this, really. He doesn’t mind not even having the option to go any further. It's good, being able to just…have this. He spent so long just wanting this much. Just easy kissing and physical closeness. It's enough, for now, and sometimes even this feels like too much. Sometimes even this is overwhelming. 

But not today. Today, Richie is all in, long lingering presses of his mouth against Eddie's lips and jaw and sucking softly on his throat, right up until Eddie says, "I desperately need painkillers." 

Richie huffs a laugh against his cheek. "My sweet lovin' isn't enough for you, baby?" 

"No, I need Tylenol 4," Eddie says, and begins attempting to sit up. 

Richie grins, and then heaves himself upright to help Eddie up and reach over for his medication and glass of water. Eddie hums his thanks and swallows them down, grumbling vaguely about bacteria in stagnant water. 

Richie lounges contentedly, watching Eddie sort out the rest of his medication for the morning and listening to him complain about sepsis or some shit. He's bathed in early morning light, sleepy and soft, with bruises dotted across his throat and swollen lips. He's frowning, and his dimple is pressed into his cheek, and his hair is wild, and he's a little stubbly around his cheek scar. He looks like a cranky, tired mess. 

"Eddie Kaspbrak," Richie sighs, "I am in love with you." 

Eddie stops in the middle of draining his water glass and chokes a little. His head whips around to stare at Richie. 

As always, Richie’s brain catches up with his mouth ten seconds too late. His face burns. “Uh. I realize now that that’s the first time I’ve said that out loud in like, the present tense and that’s kind of intense—”

"Richie," Eddie croaks. 

"I—" Richie says desperately, and then cuts off as Eddie's mouth crushes against his painfully. 

"Shit," Eddie says, his torso twisted too much to not be painful. He's propped up on one hand, and the other is clutching at Richie's shirt as he kisses him a little wildly. "Richie, _fuck_." 

"I'm sorry," Richie says against his mouth, lost and overwhelmed. 

"Shut up. _Richie_. I'm a fucking mess, I have so many issues, just. _How—_" 

Richie makes a sound, half indignant and half incredulous laughter. “Eds,” he says, still kissing him, physically unable to stop kissing him within an inch of his life. “I have literally seen you at your worst and almost nothing but your worst. I think I fucking know what I’m talking about.”

“God, you fucking idiot.” Eddie’s voice is thick now, and Richie suspects the dampness on his cheeks is tears, but he’s not going to pull away now. “I love you too.”

Richie’s heart squeezes so hard that a whimper slips from his throat, and he promptly pushes Eddie back down against the bed and climbs over him, pressing him into the mattress and kissing him as hard as he can without causing physical injury. “I love you,” he says, right into his mouth; wants to brand it into his skin. “I’m in love with you. _God_. I never thought—”

“I know,” Eddie says, and pushes up into him. 

“Thirteen-year-old Richie is absolutely losing his mind right now.”

Eddie laughs into their next kiss, clutching at him desperately. “I _know._” 

“God,” Richie says, and squeezes his eyes shut against the burning behind them. “This is the happiest I’ve ever been.”

*

The sun has just crested the horizon on the morning that they begin their drive out of Derry.

Eddie is soft and tired and sleepy-eyed in the passenger seat, blinking long and slow as he peers out the windshield. Richie can’t stop casting him fond glances, the way he’s bundled up in one of Richie’s huge sweaters and there’s a hickey peeking out just over the collar. It’s a challenge to keep both of his hands on the steering wheel. 

(He wouldn’t, but Eddie insists. He’s recited vehicle accident rates at least four times this morning so far, and has threatened Richie with death six times if he kills Eddie in a car crash.)

A minute passes in silence, and then Eddie frowns and says, “This isn’t the way to the airport.”

“No?” Richie says, a grin spreading over his face. 

Eddie’s frown deepens, and he looks around, squinting. “Richie, if you get us lost immediately—”

Richie laughs. “I biked these roads daily for like ten years, Eds, I’m not lost. We’re making a pitstop.”

Eddie groans, sinking back into his seat. “Our flight leaves in _four hours._” 

“And we’re an hour from the airport. Chill, Spaghetti Head, we can take a fucking minute.”

“Oh my god, don’t _call me that_.” 

Richie grins, and drives. 

He parks a minute later, just on the side of the road. No one’s out this early, and even if they were, they wouldn’t be out _here_. 

Eddie, whose eyes had fluttered shut, blinks and looks around again. “Where are we?” His eyes fall on the bridge just outside his window, and immediately, his pinched face softens. “Oh.”

“Mmm,” Richie says, throwing his door open. “I said I’d show you.”

Eddie sighs fondly, and lets Richie help him out of his seat. It’s been a month, now, since he got out of the hospital, and getting up is easier for him now, but he still benefits from the help. And Richie is happy to lend him a hand. Maybe it’ll get old eventually, but for now he’s enjoying being able to duck in once Eddie’s on his feet to kiss his jaw or throat, and grope his ass before skipping away with a grin. 

Eddie gives him a very unconvincing glare, then turns back to the Kissing Bridge, stuffing his hands in Richie’s hoodie pockets. “Looks...just how I remember.”

“Right?” Richie grins wryly. “Come on.”

He fishes one of Eddie’s hands out of its pocket and laces their fingers together, pulling him gently along towards the bridge. It’s old but sturdy—Eddie never liked it, paranoid as he was about it buckling underneath him somehow, but it’s been holding firm for almost thirty years since then. The red paint is flaking off in places, and the wood creaks a little underfoot, but if it can support a car, Richie is pretty sure it can handle all seventy-five pounds of Eddie Kaspbrak. 

He tells Eddie this, and receives a solid punch in the arm for his troubles. “Dickwad,” he says. “We’re not even going in, are we?”

“I was planning to do filthy, filthy things to you here, so unless you want to be out in the open for that—”

Eddie snorts. “The only filthy thing you’re allowed to do to me is change my bandages, and there’s not a chance in hell I’ll let you do that outside.” His eyes are scanning the wooden fence just outside the covered part of the bridge. 

Richie smiles and thumbs his cheek fondly, then tugs him towards a very familiar section of the fence. “Et...voila.” He gestures awkwardly, suddenly embarrassed. 

There’s a faint carving in the wood, lost in a sea of names and initials and hearts. _R + E_. The sight of it tugs at his heart. He can remember, now, the ache in his chest the first time he carved it, the shame and embarrassment and painful wanting. The knowledge, deep in his chest, that nothing would ever come of it. 

But something did. Something _did_. Richie blinks hard and clears his throat. 

Eddie sighs and steps forward to trail his fingers over it. “I _definitely_ saw this as a kid.”

“Wish I’d known,” Richie says, clutching his hand too tight. 

“Yeah.” Eddie smiles crookedly. “But we were kids. And it was the 80’s.”

“Yeah.” Richie huffs. 

Eddie traces the letters with one fingertip. The sight of it pulls at Richie’s heartstrings. “You got a pocketknife?”

Richie does. He pulls it out, and he crouches down, starts scraping the tip over old grooves. Eddie can’t join him on the ground, but he settles his hand over Richie’s, provides a little extra pressure. It feels surreal. _R + E._

God. Richie never thought, back then, that he’d ever be able to have this. He came so, so close to never having this. 

If he’s sniffling a little by the time he finishes, Eddie doesn’t mention it. He leans back against the wood, and Eddie leans into him, a hand on Richie’s hip. His lips linger over Richie’s jaw. 

Richie clears his throat, clutching Eddie’s waist carefully below his wounds. “Any idea why it’s called the Kissing Bridge?”

Eddie hums vaguely. “I figured just because people came here to make out. Not a lot of traffic through here.”

“Mmm.” Richie tips his face towards him, and Eddie’s lips touch the corner of his mouth. “I think I always thought there was a myth, or something. Maybe I just made it up. That people who carved their names here would be together forever, or something.”

“Does that work if you carved both names in by yourself without telling the other person?” Eddie murmurs against his cheek. 

Richie laughs. “I was hopeful.”

“Well it didn’t work,” Eddie says. “Because we didn’t see each other for over two decades.”

“Fucking bridge,” Richie says, without heat. 

“Maybe it’ll take this time.”

Richie grins, turning so that Eddie is the one pinned against the bridge and Richie’s pressed along his front. He kisses him slowly, indulgently, and then pulls away and looks at Eddie’s face, at his crooked little smile and scarred cheek and dark brows and tired brown eyes. Richie rubs a thumb over his jaw, and then his scar. Presses a kiss to his nose and slides the pad of his thumb over his lips. Eddie kisses it gently, and Richie grins, pushing his thumb into Eddie’s mouth to press into his tongue. 

Eddie lets him for a second, gaze dark and tongue warm and wet, and then he bites Richie’s thumb, hard enough that he yanks it back out. 

“Ow, Eddie, fuck you.”

Eddie grins. “That’s disgusting. Who knows where those hands have been?”

“You know exactly where they’ve been,” Richie mutters, wiping his thumb on Eddie’s shirt and then leaning in to bite at his lip. 

“Stop being so horny all the time,” Eddie says into the kiss, humming at the back of his throat. 

“I can’t,” Richie says, and then manhandles him towards the nearest wall of the bridge, so that he can press Eddie up against it and ravish him more thoroughly. 

Eddie makes a sound of surprise, nearly tripping over his feet, and says, “You can’t just push me wherever you want me, fuckwad.”

“I can and I will,” Richie says, mouthing at his jaw. 

“You’re taking advantage of me,” Eddie says, pushing his hands up under Richie’s shirt. “Once I’ve recovered it’s over for you, bitch.”

Richie laughs against his skin and says, “Oh, buddy, I look forward to it.”

They’ll get back in the car, in a minute. Eddie will lose his mind if they’re less than three hours early for their flight. It’s time, Richie knows, to head home. To LA, for now. Together. They’ll stay in Richie’s condo until they decide what they want to do, where they want to go. Eddie’s on sick leave from work and is in the middle of divorce bullshit. Richie is one step away from firing his writer and starting to tell his own jokes, and that’s absolutely terrifying. Things are changing. They’re not going back to the lives they knew. 

They’re leaving Derry. Richie wasn’t sure, at first, if he’d ever be able to. It’s scary, leaving it behind, even though the town haunts him at every turn. It’s scary, knowing that the last time they left, they forgot. Richie doesn’t want to forget anything, not anymore. Not even the crazy nightmare shit. 

But it’s time. And with Eddie beside him, Richie feels kind of invincible. 

Fuck that fucking clown. Derry is their town now, and Richie can leave it whenever he wants. Richie can do fucking _anything._

In a minute. For now, he’s a little busy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hooHOOOOOO. i love them so much... i will probably also write more fics for them bc i have a Need. thanks for sticking with me yall, please leave a comment if you can!
> 
> also thanks to erica for ideas, cheerleading, and assuring me it wasn't too foot-fetishy which was a real concern. reddie....4 life.
> 
> and check out this [amazing gifset](https://douche-roof.tumblr.com/post/188347224313/quote-is-from-the-fic-up-off-the-floor-by) made by a reader for this fic!!!


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